Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Chapter 5, verse 7, provides a better example of issues of meaning. The third line of the Sanskrit reads: sarva-bhuta-atma-bhuta-atma. Sarva-bhuta is defined in the Monier-Williams Sanskrit Dictionary (revised edition, published 1899) as meaning “all beings.” Atma-bhuta is defined in Monier-Williams as meaning “become another’s self”; “attached to, faithful.” Or, to break it down word by word: every, living being, self, living being, self (sarva, bhuta, atma, bhuta, atma).

Wilkins translates this line as “whose soul is the universal soul.” Barbara Stoler Miller translates it as “unites himself with the self of all creatures.” Sir Edwin Arnold translates it as “lost in the common life of all which lives.” Expanding to the complete verse, and including the preceding verse, can give more perspective to the situation.

Wilkins translates these two verses, 6 and 7, as: “To be a Sannyasee, or recluse, without application, is to obtain pain and trouble; whilst the Moonee, who is employed in the practice of his duty, presently obtaineth Brahm, the Almighty. The man who, employed in the practice of works, is of a purified soul, a subdued spirit, and restrained passions, and whose soul is the universal soul, is not affected by so being.” “Not affected by so being” means “not affected by being in the practice of works.” In other words, a person who is acting or working in some way is not adversely affected by their actions if their soul is pure, their spirit is controlled, their passions are restrained, and they act in a way which respects the view that, just as they have a self or soul, so too do all living beings have a self or soul.

I really want this blog to be focused primarily on applying Bhagavad-gita in daily life, and not on slicing and dicing translation issues. But until more content has been developed, there isn’t a lot to work with in that regard. So I’ll go ahead and post this, and try to move things forward more next time.

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In the summer of 1845 Henry David Thoreau moved to a woods on the shore of Walden Pond. For the next two years he lived there in a small cabin he had mostly built himself, located on land owned by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

In his book Walden Thoreau described his reason for moving to Walden Pond: "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

Earlier in Walden Thoreau also wrote: "My purpose in going to Walden Pond was not to live cheaply nor to live dearly there, but to transact some private business with the fewest possible obstacles."

One of the few items Thoreau took with him to Walden Pond was a copy of Charles Wilkins’s translation of Bhagavad-gita, which he had been introduced to by Emerson. It was the first English language edition of Bhagavad-gita, published in 1785 and titled The Bhagvat-Geeta, or Dialogues of Kreeshna and Arjoon.

In chapter 16 of Walden Thoreau wrote: "In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagvat-Geeta, since whose composition years of the gods have elapsed, and in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial; and I doubt if that philosophy is not to be referred to a previous state of existence, so remote is its sublimity from our conceptions."

Emerson also wrote about Bhagavad-gita:“I owed--my friend and I owed--a magnificent day to the Bhagavat Geeta. It was the first of books; it was as if an empire spake to us, nothing small or unworthy, but large, serene, consistent, the voice of an old intelligence which in another age and climate had pondered and thus disposed of the same questions which exercise us.”

This blog is dedicated to the exploration, application, and discussion of Bhagavad-gita, using primarily Charles Wilkins’s translation Bhagvat-Geeta, the edition Thoreau took with him to Walden Pond.